Intinction: an Historical, Exegetical, and Systematic-Theological Examination Reverend Lane B

Intinction: An Historical, Exegetical, and Systematic-Theological Examination Reverend Lane B. Keister December 2012 Introduction: What Is At Stake? The Reformers commonly spoke of three marks of the true church: the gospel faithfully preached, the sacraments faithfully administered, and church discipline properly carried out. Intinction, which may be defined as the practice of dipping the bread into the wine during the administration of the Lord's Supper, affects one of the three marks of the church, i.e., the correct administration of the sacraments. No one in the debate would claim that the gospel is at stake. Nor would anyone claim that the Lord's Supper becomes null and void through the use of intinction. What this paper will attempt to prove is that the issue at stake is neither more nor less than the clarity of the sign of the Lord's Supper. As such, it is an issue that cannot be ignored. However, no church or teaching elder that currently practices intinction in our denomination should feel that they are under attack because of this practice. No church should be run out of town on a rail on this basis! If proponents of the change to the PCA's BCO should be victorious, all that would be required is a change in practice. These comments are offered for two reasons: 1. The temperature of the debate should be low. There is no need for heat in what should be a collegial and brotherly debate. 2. The issue needs to be seen in its proper context, as neither a gospel- level issue (a hill on which to die), nor an issue to be ignored (as if it were an attempt to prescribe, say, the shape of every Reformed church building). There are issues which do not jeopardize the gospel, and yet still require attention. We need to be biblical in our approach to worship, and it is always healthy to ask questions concerning practices of worship as to their biblical legitimacy, especially given our historical roots in the Reformed tradition, which has always upheld the regulative principle of worship. This paper will assume the regulative principle of worship as the Westminster Standards have defined it. WCF 21.1 says, “But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions, of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture.” WLC 109 goes further in its description: Q. What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment? A. The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.” This paper will first trace the history of the practice of intinction, and then examine the relevant biblical practices to come to the conclusion that intinction is not a Reformed practice, and that it is also unbiblical. A History of the Practice The Emergence of and Opposition to the Practice (340 A.D.-13th Century) The common wisdom among opponents of intinction is that it arose after the doctrine of transubstantiation, and was a method of preventing Christ's blood from spilling, and that it is associated primarily with Roman Catholicism. Although there are elements of truth in this assessment, the true history of the practice is a fair bit more complicated than that. The ancient practice of celebrating the Eucharist was clearly communion in both kinds (that is, the bread and the cup), and separately.1 The first reference to sacramental intinction in church history appears to be in the writings of Julius I in 340 A.D. In the context of rejecting several irregular practices regarding the Eucharist, he states the following: But their practice of giving the people intincted Eucharist for the fulfillment of communion is not received from the gospel witness, where, when he gave the apostles his body and blood, giving the bread separately and the chalice separately is recorded.2 It is not clear how or why intinction first was introduced into the church. According to William Freestone, the possibility exists that it was a convenience directed towards the administration of the Eucharist to the sick, making the bread easier to swallow.3 However, this was usually not our modern practice of intincting the bread into the wine, but rather of dipping bread into unconsecrated liquid.4 According to the Ohio Presbytery Report, the first mention of it is connected to paedocommunion, to make the bread easier to swallow by an infant.5 Freestone thinks it more likely that the practice originated from the fear of accident, and then passed over into communion of the sick.6 This author would disagree, for if intinction arose as a result of fear of accident originally, then how did dipping bread into unconsecrated liquid get its origin? It is more likely that communion of the sick (and/or paedocommunion) was the first reason for intinction's origin. From there, it would pass more logically to dipping the bread into the wine. Fear of accident, therefore, would still be the origin of the practice in the sacramental form of intinction, as opposed to the unconsecrated form of intinction connected with communing the sick.7 The first reference to the practice in the Eastern church is in the seventh century.8 St. 1 See Robert F. Taft, “Communion Via Intinction,” Studia Liturgica 26 (1996), 225-236, p. 228. I am grateful to Dr. Karen Westerfield Tucker, editor of Studia Liturgica, for sending me a pdf of this article, which is unavailable online. This article includes a history of the practice that is complementary to Freestone's (see below), certainly more up to date, and almost as thorough. Taft himself is Roman Catholic. 2 The translation is that of Jonathan G. Lange, “This Do In Remembrance of Me,” an article presented to the Spring Pastor's Conference of the Wyoming District, May 5, 2008. The article is online at http://web.archive.org/web/20101006112051/http://wy.lcms.org/pastoralconference/spring08/papers/lange_thisdo.pdf (accessed 12/4/2012). The original Latin is as follows: Illud vero, quod pro complemento communionis intinctam tradunt eucharistiam populis, nec hoc prolatum ex Evangelio testimonium receperunt, ubi apostolis corpus suum commendavit et sanguinem. Seorsum enim panis, et seorsum calicis commendatio memoratur. See Patrologia Latinae, vol 8, p. 970. I owe the reference to the “Ohio Presbytery Intinction Study Committee Report” (Feb 2012, accessed 12/4/2012): http://theaquilareport.com/the-pca-ohio-presbytery-receives-committee-report-on-intinction-/. 3 W.H. Freestone, The Sacrament Reserved (Milwaukee: Mowbray & Co., Ltd., 1917), pp. 145-146. This volume is available on Google books, and offers probably the best single history of intinction available. 4 Freestone, op. cit., p. 144. See also M. Jean Grancolas, Traité De L'Intinction (Paris: Chez Christophe Remy, 1714), pp. 16-20, as an explanation of the reference in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VI.44. I am very much indebted to Vic Bottomly for translating the Grancolas treatise for me (and all translations of this treatise are from Bottomly's translation). It is, as far as this author knows, the only full-length treatise on intinction in existence, and was written to refute the practice. Grancolas was Roman Catholic. There has, in fact, been much opposition to intinction within Roman Catholic circles throughout history, though not so much lately. If anything, the practice should be associated primarily with the Eastern Orthodox Church, which administers the Sacrament invariably by intinction, mixing the elements together, and then serving them to the communicant on a spoon, called the “Labis.” 5 “Ohio Presbytery Intinction Study Committee Report,” near the beginning. 6 Freestone, op. cit., p. 147. 7 See Freestone, op. cit., p. 144-152 for a description of the three different kinds of intinction. 8 Grancolas mentions a man named Arcudins, who claims that the practice was established in the Greek churches even from the time of John Chrysostom. I have not been able to track down this reference, and Grancolas does not mention Sophronius mentions the administration (again, to the sick) of the Lord's Supper as being “the holy chalice filled with the holy body of the Lord and the blood.”9 In the East, the practice gradually expanded, until it was the regular practice of the Eucharist, and not just to the sick, or to children. It is not known how the practice became so universal in the East, given the East's penchant for holding to tradition. There was hardly any opposition to the practice in the East.10 This became a point of contention between East and West, despite the fact that by the time of the Great Schism (1054 A.D.), the West was practicing intinction in some areas as well.

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